2019 NBA Finals: Canadian culture of politeness on full display as Toronto Raptors look to win first championship
- Polite trash-talking on Jimmy Kimmel Live and apology flowers to Kevin Durant as entire country gets behind its only basketball team
- Why are Canadians polite? Turns out it’s part of their national fabric as citizens
First off, I’d like to apologise for this column, because, well, apologies are in my blood. Secondly, go Raptors!
Not only are the Raptors uniting my nation up in the great white north, they’re showing the world how Canadians handle sports and rivalries. When we’re not riding dogsleds, picking fights while skating on ice or chugging fireball whisky on our snowmobiles, we love our major pro sports teams to death.
Numerous outlets have taken notice of the cross-border gamesmanship and are poking fun at Canadians for being too polite. If that’s the worst people can drum up about our beautiful nation and its people, I say continue the polite bashing in earnest.
Late night TV show host Conan O’Brien was the first to get in on the action. One of his staff writers, Levi MacDougall, hails from Alberta and is a huge Raptors fan. MacDougall did a hilarious bit in which he went around the show’s Los Angeles office talking trash in a way only true hosers can.
“Hey Suzy, Warriors, eh? More like Golden State worriers. Yeah and I’d be worried too if I was playing a team like the Raptors, eh? Hope that wasn’t too harsh, see ya around.”
MacDougall then proceeds to head back to everyone he trash talked in fine Canadian form and of course, apologise profusely.
Jimmy Kimmel has also been poking fun, regularly sending a camera crew to Toronto during the 2019 NBA Finals. In one segment, he asked Canadians on the street to trash talk the Warriors. Here’s some gems from my fellow countrymen:
“I mean I think they’re a great team and they’re in the finals for a reason.”
“Golden State ain’t so golden any more, huh?”
“Why would I trash talk them? They haven’t done nothing wrong to me, or my team. All I’m saying is everybody is playing right. So if they want to win, they better play better than us.”
Why are Canadians so polite? I did some research and it stems from the social democratic political ideology running through our blood like maple syrup. As Canadians we tend to put the collective before the individual, as opposed to the US where personal freedoms rank superior. We’re also a “nation of others”, a young country, we signed our first confederation in 1867 and are comprised largely of immigrants from somewhere else who came to Canada looking for a better way of life. Our social fabric lies in the idea that life is a little bit easier if we all try to get along despite our differences.
So, can we back up our politeness with scientific studies? Of course.
A 2016 Canadian research paper by two doctoral students at McMaster University looked at millions of geo-tagged tweets from the previous year, compiling the top 10 words used by both Canadians and Americans.
The most used words by Canadians on Twitter are exactly what you would think: “amazing”, “great” and “favourite.” Of course, the word “agree” is up there too. And when it comes to Americans, well, a bunch are not suitable for print, and the others are go-to Yankee lingo like “damn”, “hate” and “ass”.
Even the New York Post got in on the action. The newspaper, known for trash-talking pretty much everyone on the planet and their dog, picked up on a tweet from Jessica Kleinschmidt, a digital correspondent for ABC Sports in the Bay Area of California where the Warriors are based.
Someone, anonymously from Canada, sent flowers and an apology note to the NBA team’s head office and apologised for the “dumb ass” Raptors fans who cheered when Kevin Durant went down with an injury during game five on Tuesday.
See, we do swear, from time to time. Sorry about that, eh.
